The Mating Season: Werewolves of Montana Book 6 (24 page)

Ignoring him, the prince walked up to the cavern wall, flattened his palm and closed his eyes. Suddenly an archway appeared on the rock. It looked like a doorway shrouded in mist. Alexander stepped back.

“I will close the portal after you use it, Alexander. It is too dangerous to leave it open any longer. You, and only you, can enter it once, and the gate will close,” Tristan told him.

“Thank you,” the prince said quietly. “Thank you for reminding me of the importance of family.”

He gave a disgusted look at Drust. “Some family, anyway.”

“Alex,” Drust whispered. “Do not forsake me, son.”

The dragon prince did not look back, but jumped into the portal. Tristan waved a hand and chanted, and then the portal closed.

Tristan palmed the dragon’s scale with a look of tremendous satisfaction. “Your memory will turn to dust, dragon, as it should have centuries ago. Your kin has no loyalty to you. I command their loyalty now. Skylar gave me her dragon’s scale to save her cousin from her own free will. They, too, now know what a murdering bastard you are.”

Naked fury showed on Drust’s face. The dragon snarled, his hands turning into claws and Nikita instinctively drew back, though she was a safe distance away. Drust turned his head and breathed fire at Tristan, but the flames did not touch the wizard.

“You took away everything from me, you fucking wolf.” Drust came toward him.

Tristan growled and then shifted into wolf.

Drust shifted as well, into a silver dragon the size of a small pony. Evenly matched in weight and muscle, they rushed at each other.

Snarling, they clashed, the enormous silver wolf and the silver dragon, clawing and biting. Tristan gained the advantage and tore at one of Drust’s scales.

If the wolf tore out the damned dragon’s throat, it would not be enough. She watched the fight with satisfaction, but deep inside, something nagged her that this was wrong. Did Drust truly kill her? Memories were made of shadows, it seemed.

The dragon bore great gouges on his scales. Her desire to see Drust hurt began to fade.

They could be locked here for days, weeks, ages, and there would be no resolution. Just as Tristan had spent too much time wandering these lands, locked in his own self-pity and misery. When would it end? This cycle of violence and anger?

Tristan said time had a way of warping in the Shadow Lands. How long had they been here? She had no way of knowing inside the cavern and she remembered Tristan’s dire warning that they must get to Tir Na-nog soon.

All she knew was that she felt weaker, much weaker, since arriving at Drust’s cavern. Niki glanced down at her arms. They seemed to be growing red. Odd.

“Stop it!” she cried out. “I don’t want you to get hurt, Tristan!”

The wolf and the dragon broke apart and Tristan immediately shifted back into Skin. Drust turned back into human form, but instead of the solid body he seemed to project, his body looked less corporeal.

He was badly injured, while Tristan didn’t even bear a scratch.

“Relax, Nikita. I am not injured.” He turned to Drust. “It is time you fully paid the price for your betrayal of me, and murder of Nikita and our babe.”

Tristan smiled grimly and waved a hand, transporting them to a scene straight out of her worst nightmare.

His past, and hers. The execution block.

Chapter 12

They were standing in a replica of the courtyard of the castle of King Emer. Tristan stood upon the same wooden platform where he had breathed his last breath.

Only this time it was Drust, clad only in gray leggings, his chest bare, his arms stretched upward. Thin ropes circling his wrists were looped around a hook on the pole, keeping him captive.

For centuries, he had waited for this moment and the justice Danu had promised to him. “You shall be avenged of the one who wronged you, Tristan,” she had told him long, long ago.

He only possessed the power to exact revenge on those in the Shadow World who had wronged him.

Nikita, sitting on a green throne draped with vines and leaves, an exact replica of the one King Emer had sat upon as he watched Tristan die, looked pale and wan. Her skin was growing ruddy.

“Fear not, my sweet. This shall not take long.” Tristan stepped close to Drust and clasped his throat. Though the dragon was not flesh, he could make him feel mental pain.

Exquisite pain.

Oh, he would not torture the dragon, and have Nikita watch and sicken her, reminding her of the past. But he would inflict on the dragon the mental anguish of waiting…

The horrid anticipation as the cloth hiding the sharp instruments was unfolded, and the executioner held up each gleaming piece and announced what he would do to him…

He brought his face close to Drust’s. “Have you ever felt the agony of waiting for the whip to slice your skin? For a metal hook to tear into the muscles of your back, and the eventuality of knowing those who torment you will take your manhood away from you, in front of a jeering crowd, as your beloved watches? You try, oh you try, so hard to keep your silence, but then your screams become a song, and you pray for death.”

“I am sorry, Tristan.” Drust looked at him with dull eyes. “We were friends, once. Brothers in arms.”

“An apology a little late, dragon. We were friends, until the day you betrayed me. Emer told me he gave you one hundred thousand pieces of gold in exchange for revealing where I hid. He showed me this in prison and laughed, and then he brought me here as his executioner ripped my flesh open and made me scream again, and again…”

He should feel triumph at finally having justice. But only emptiness settled in his chest. Deep inside, he knew this was wrong. It would give him no peace.

No.
He must pay for hurting my Nikita and our baby
. Tristan waved a hand to summon a hook in his palm.

He opened his hand.

It was empty.

Summoning all his magick, he tried again.

Nothing.

Tristan stared at his empty hands as Nikita sat on the throne, her head buried in her hands.

Horror pulsed through him, and knowing dread. Tristan looked at his former best friend. “You did not betray me.”

Drust closed his eyes. “No. Just as I told you, I did not turn you in to the king’s soldiers.”

Tristan reeled. This made no sense. Gods, what had he done?

He waved a hand and the ropes holding Drust captive vanished. The dragon shifter slumped downward, sitting on the platform. Gray mist began creeping along the courtyard, hiding it from view.

The gray mist of shame.

“I never would have betrayed you, Tristan. Someone else did, and blamed me to make your torment even worse. They are responsible for writing that letter and signing my name to it.” Bleakness showed in the dragon’s eyes. “I was away at a meeting with other dragons, rallying them to fight with us. By the time I discovered what happened and returned, you were dead. And I blamed myself for not giving you a place more secure, a place where no one would find you.”

Tristan glanced at Nikita, worried about her paleness, the shadows beneath her eyes. “Nikita remembered in a dream that you gave her the potion that killed her.”

“I did. I begged for a potion from Mara to help Nikita. She was bleeding and in danger of losing your babe. But someone poisoned it and she died.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” Drust shook his head. “Perhaps Mara.”

Mara, who was still alive. The bitch.

“I did not know. I looked into the past, and saw you,” Tristan felt shame and horror creeping through him at the thought of wanting Drust to suffer as he had. “All these years… I thought it was you.”

Drust sighed. “You kept insisting I was guilty and I was guilty, in a way. I failed you, Tristan. I failed our friendship and our brotherhood when I failed to keep you hidden and safe. I wanted to keep your mate and babe safe as well, and I failed in that.”

He waved a hand. “This, more than anything, is why I have been stuck here, unable to move on.”

But it made no sense. Many of his visions were clouded, but the one of Drust holding up his severed head had been most clear.

“I saw a vision. You holding my severed head up before a crowd and shouting.” Tristan’s jaw tightened. “In triumph.”

“Visions from the past are always clouded when one is dead,” Drust said ironically. “I did take your head from the pike on the castle wall, where Emer had it mounted. I flew down and retrieved it. If I could not save your body, then your spirit would live on…in the people and our cause, the cause you wanted to win, Tristan.”

He blinked.

“It hurt me so badly to see what they had done to you, my friend. To know that the Lupine whose bond I cherished, whose courage never ceased, who sacrificed so much for all shifters, not just his people, had met with such an end. I wanted to fly over the king’s castle, blow fire upon all who resided there. But I knew that was not the way to win the war. I took your head, and I showed it to the troops, who had grown disheartened with your death. I shook it at them as a rallying cry, ‘Let his death not be in vain! Honor him with your lives.’”

Tristan went still, his stomach knotting, his throat burning.

“And then I buried you, in a place of honor, where Emer’s soldiers would never find you. A warrior’s burial. Fit for a king.”

He could barely speak for all the emotion tight in his chest. A deep silence fell between them. And then Tristan remembered the good times he and Drust shared, fishing in the lake near the castle, dining in the great hall, hunting for prey in the forest.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

Drust’s eyes were wet. He scrubbed at them with a shaking fist and then his mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile. “It was a rather large grave, for you always did have a big head.”

“You always did accuse me of that,” he recalled, needing to break this tension between them. “At least you found my head in one piece. The other pieces were scattered to the four corners of the kingdom. I imagine they were hard to find.”

“And I had no time for a scavenger hunt,” Drust joked back. “Especially trying to find your lost manhood. It was so small, it would be like hunting for a needle in a haystack.”

“Larger than yours, dragon.”

“Have you ever seen a dragon’s penis after we shift? Much larger than a wolf.”

“But Lupines can knot during sex and we can deliver much more pleasure to our mates.”

Drust grinned. “I missed you, Tristan, my friend. I missed our sparring, and your humor.”

The smile dropped. “Will you forgive me for failing you, and your lovely mate? For not protecting her and your child?”

Tristan’s chest tightened. “No, my old friend. I failed
you
. I should have trusted in our friendship and our bond and not in watery visions of the past nor an evil Fae king’s words.”

The dragon reached out to offer his forearm for Tristan to clasp in the way of warrior brothers.

The humility in Drust’s voice reminded Tristan of the other times when they had broken bread and fought together. “I forgive you,” Tristan told him quietly, and felt something ease in his chest at last.

“Tristan,” Niki called out. Her voice seemed feeble.

Turning, he looked at Nikita and felt fresh horror.

Time had a way of slipping away from you in the Shadow Lands. And in his thirst for revenge against Drust, he had neglected the most important thing in the world.

Nikita.

The magick potion that saved her life, that enabled her to venture through the Shadow Lands, was wearing off.

Her skin had turned a mottled red. Her hair was nearly all silver and her feet…he rushed to her, seeing only shadows where her toes had been.

Tristan reached for her right hand. Her fingernails had turned to crystals.

He had wasted an entire day pursuing his vengeance against Drust. If he did not get her out of the Shadow Lands and to the safety of Tir Na-nog by sunset, she would fade into shadow.

Forever.

Chapter 13

She felt weaker than she’d ever felt from the parvolupus virus. Niki struggled to stand from the opulent throne, and collapsed upon the wood platform.

I have no toes, she thought in a daze, staring at her ankles.
Maybe this is a dream and I’ll awaken. What did you do to me, Tristan?

The wizard rushed to her side, anguish tightening his expression. “Nikita. Oh my Nikita, I lost track of time. The potion is wearing off.”

“You promised to always put my needs before all others,” she whispered. “And once more, Drust and the war came first.”

He looked at Drust. “I have to get her out of the Shadow Lands before sunset and to Tir Na-nog. She cannot walk. Will you help us?”

Conjuring his gray cloak once more, Drust rushed over to them. His gaze turned troubled as he looked at her and then upward at the sky.

The sky, which had started to grow darker.

“The Crystal Gate is closest,” he said. “I have taken many dragons there, acting as their guide. Take her to the Crystal Gate.”